


Is family meant to hurt this much?

by magznus



Series: TPP [15]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Self-Hatred, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:34:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26341957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magznus/pseuds/magznus
Summary: a look at Juno's relationships with his brother and mother over the years.
Relationships: Benzaiten Steel & Juno Steel, Mick Mercury & Benzaiten Steel & Juno Steel & Sasha Wire
Series: TPP [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639732
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Is family meant to hurt this much?

Benziten had always been the better one. Better at school, better at dancing, better at making people smile. Juno had lived his life in his brother's shadow, only stepping away to get in trouble or pass off their mom. In private when it was just the two of them, they were an unstoppable force. But something about other people made Juno shrink back and let Ben take the lead.   
Moving out had been the first time Juno had done something without Ben by his side. Of course it hadn't been the plan. They had planned to move out together, finding a little apartment equal distance from a dance studio and the precinct Juno was lined up to get a job at. It had two bedrooms, the landlord was one of the nicest people they had met, utilities all paid and right inside their budget Everything had seemed perfect, they were getting out.  
Ben had told him three days before they were supposed to sign the lease. Sat Juno down in the little kitchen of the apartment while their mother was out. Told Juno he had to stay, that he had been thinking it over for weeks and finally realised that he had to stay. According to him the dance studio wasn't too far away still so he would constantly be in the area, just not living with him anymore.  
It had taken everything for Juno to not cry and scream and break apart the small kitchen right then and there. He had listened silently the entire time, refusing to look Ben in the eyes. He didn't know if it hurt worse that Ben was abandoning him to move out on his own, or that Ben still expected him to leave in the first place.   
Once his brother was done talking Juno stood up slowly and left, walking out of the apartment with only a few creds and his keys. It was getting late and the sun was almost down but he didn't care. Juno walked to the nearest sewer entrance and slipped inside, silent the entire time. It didn't take him long to reach where most of the rabbits lived, he passed them the credit so they would leave him alone and moved past them to a small isolated corner he had grown familiar with.   
He cried himself to sleep there in the sewers, with only the sound of dripping water and the distant roar of rabbits to accompany him. It wasn't the first time, and it certainly wasn't the last time he had done that. But it was the first time he was down there because of Benziten. And Juno didn't know how to handle that.  
***  
He moved out a week later, into a much smaller and shittier apartment. Without Ben splitting the rent we could only afford so much, and he considered himself lucky to find somewhere so fast right where he needed to be. Mick helped him move after he rejected Ben's offer.   
It only took one trip to get the few things Juno owned and actually wanted, to his new place. They spent the rest of the day sitting on the floor eating pizza and watching tv through the window of a neighboring apartment. He knew Ben had boxed up the rest of his things after he left, had probably stacked it up somewhere hoping he would come back for it.   
They didn't talk for almost a month after Juno moved. Even if Juno hadn't been ignoring him, the second he moved out Sarah had kicked him off the comms plan and he didn't have enough money to pay for his own so talking to anyone was a struggle. Once he was able to make and receive calls again, Ben called him almost every single day.   
Sometimes Juno would hang up and just try and move on, others he would let it ring out, watching as Benziten flashed across the screen over and over for a full minute before stopping.   
When he was finally no longer so angry and hurt he almost cried every time he saw a family walk by, he gathered the courage to call his brother.   
It was a short talk, forced and painful. Ben apologized, Juno tried to forgive him. They hung up and he laid down on the couch he had gotten for free and cried.   
They started talking again more after that. Conversations slowly became easier, and Juno began to actually forgive his brother. Ben actually came over to the apartment once or twice just to sit around and play cards or eat junk food like they used to. It took some time but they even managed to get mick and sasha over once. It had felt good, if only for a few hours as they sat around on Juno's terrible furniture and talked.   
***  
Juno never once talked to Sarah after moving out, and somewhere along the way he had started doing that, calling her sarah. Like the second he wasn't there, around her all the time, she lost the last trace of being his mom and just turned into Sarah. Ben hated it, always called her mom almost like he was correcting Juno each time it came up without actually commenting on it.   
Being on his own was...different. Juno didn’t know if he could say it was better. It wasn't like he didn't know how to take care of himself, he had been doing that for most of his life. But he had also lived with two other people for most of his life. The constant noise of someone else has suddenly gone. The reassurance that he wasn't completely alone no matter how much he felt like he was, now just silence.   
He hated how it made him feel. When in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep he started to miss her. He didn't even know who or what he was missing, certainly not the abuse or neglect. Not the screaming, or breaking things, or constant reek of alcohol. But there was this, ache right in his chest, where something was missing. He wanted her to be there, he wanted to get to show her around the small apartment with pride because it was his, something he had worked for and bought with his own money. He wanted his mom to be proud of him for becoming an adult. He wanted her to hug him and congratulate him, to bring him a casserole so that he didn't have to cook dinner for himself. He wanted it so badly, and he hated himself for it. She didn't deserve the right of him wanting those things. She had never given that to him, so why would he expect it from her now.   
Trying to convince himself that if she did show up for some reason it would end terribly didn't help. All he could think of was how he didn't know that, he didn't know how she would react. Juno would lay in bed for hours weighing the variables, what if she did come over. What would she say to his free furniture and second hand dishes? What would she think of the view into other apartments? Would she want to find the closest coffee shop? Or ask how far his walk was to work?  
He would fall asleep imagining her coming through the door with a housewarming gift, giving him a hug and telling him how proud she was. He always woke up angry.   
***  
Juno adjusted to his new life with time. Living alone wasn't so bad once he learned to sleep with a white noise machine on, to block out the absence of someone else in the room. He got lots of blankets to make his couch and bed more comfortable and appealing. And work took up so much of his time and energy he wasn't able to linger on much of anything when he wasn't working.  
Ben worked only a few blocks away, and whenever they had days off together or lunch breaks at the same time, they always met up at a little coffee shop Ben had found. They would gossip about Sasha or tease Mick, sometimes Ben would catch Juno up on what was going on with him and Sarah. And though Juno never asked, Ben somehow always brought it up just when Juno was thinking about her.   
It became his new normal, and it was nice for a time. One day Rita showed up at his work, and after that she just stuck around. He made friends at work, and even got into a relationship with a batista from the coffee shop.   
***  
Benziten had always been the better one. And when he was suddenly gone, Juno didn't know what that made him. He didn’t have a someone else anymore. There was no one's shadow for him to hide behind. He couldn't deflect conversations to his brother anymore.  
Juno spent most of his time in the sewers. He stopped remembering to bring creds with him, letting the rabbits beat him up as much as they liked most days. He didn’t have the energy to fight back, didn’t do anything but lay there while they searched his pockets to find a nutrient Rifa had snuck in while he wasn’t looking, or a lost cred he had forgotten about.   
When they left was when Juno would cry. Only then would he let himself break. It was almost easier to let everything go after having the shit beat out of him than while simply grieving. He just laid there and let it out for hours, sometimes falling asleep, other times dragging himself up and back to his apartment.   
He had thought he had been alone when he first moved out. Had thought he was done missing his mother and hating her for it. But that was nothing compared to the months after Benziten's death. His brother was gone, not just to the other side of town and only a phone call away. Really truly gone. Juno missed him more than anything. When he wasn't having nightmares about finding Ben, he was dreaming of when they were children. Of their last good night as a family. He would wake up aching for the stories his mother used to tell them before bed.   
One weekend, tired and alone, he sat down and watched all of Turbo and Andromeda. It took him three full days, rewinding each time he fell asleep so that he didn’t miss a second. After that he found interviews, behind the scenes videos, a backstage pass special. All featuring her, looking so put together, happy as she talked about her writing and the projects she was looking forward to.   
It was like watching someone he almost knew, just on the other side of the screen. Juno found a video of her reading out a bit of an episode for a promo, he put it on loop and fell asleep to her voice.   
***  
Years later, a much happier Juno once again found that video. Sarah steel was sitting in a little office chair in a meeting room, holding a script out in front of her like a newborn baby. She was smiling at the camera and behind it he could hear Jack Takano quietly signaling her to begin. He turned the video on to a loop, laying down in his small bed on the carte blanche and falling asleep to the sound of his mother's voice.

**Author's Note:**

> this just turned into me projecting my mommy issues onto juno.....sorry


End file.
